DOCSLIB.ORG

Not Without My Daughter

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Not Without My Daughter BETWEEN ETHIOPIA AND JERUSALEM Appendices: A Selection of My Reports in Yediot Aharonot Appendix 4: Not Without My Daughter By Adeno Dan Adebe, November 2020 Appendix 4: Not Without My Daughter1 “For twenty years, I have been asking all the relevant authorities to help me find my daughter. Who haven’t I met? I met the Ethiopians who operated in Sudan on Mossad’s behalf, and they promised to help. I went to the Absorp- tion Ministry, I went to the Jewish Agency, I spoke with the Defense Ministry. Nobody listened to me. Later, I even met representatives of the Ethiopian government and asked them to help me. Everyone told me that she had died. I persisted. I told them that I knew she was alive. She was married to a Sudanese man, and I had proof. I heard from people who had seen her in Sudan with her husband in recent years. Nothing helped. Nobody believed me. Then I decided I had no choice, and I had to take this task into my own hands. I packed a suitcase and all my savings and went to the Ethiopian-Sudanese border. I told everyone, I’m not going back to Israel without my daughter.” Tekela Samu, 70, a resident of Ashkelon, made aliyah in Operation Moses. He is visibly moved as he recalls his journey back to the inferno of Sudan two years ago. “It was clear to me that if I didn’t bring my daughter by myself, nobody would bring her to Israel. I was so desperate to see her. She is my eldest daughter. One way or another, he reached the border with Sudan, lived in a rickety shack and started mapping out the links between all the local smugglers and criminals to find his long-lost daughter. “I made the same journey on foot more than twenty years ago, and I never wanted to go back to that terrible place. I hired smugglers who smuggle people from Sudan to Ethiopia and vice versa. I told them about my daughter and where I was told she had been sighted. They told me it would take them at least a month to get back to me with an answer. I told them, ‘Guys, take five months if you need it. I don’t care. I’m waiting for you here and I’m not budging. I want my daughter back.’ About a month and a half later, they came back with their first piece of information.” Around 4,000 Ethiopian Jews, who left Ethiopia for Sudan twenty years ago on their way to Israel, did not make it to kiss the soil of the Land of Israel. They died on the exhausting trek, mostly while waiting to be rescued from the refugee camps and the famine, disease, and violence from other refugees, Sudanese soldiers, and slave traders. Hundreds of Jews, especially women, disappeared on that tragic trek, and as far as their families are concerned, they are still missing persons. Recently, the community has finally despaired of the Israeli establishment’s impo- tence and many have started embarking on private and extremely dangerous journeys to try to track down their long-lost loved ones. Tekela Samu is just one of them. The connection between Jewish communities in the West and the Land of Israel and Ethiopian Jewry was forged in the late nineteenth century, but it remained flimsy until after the establishment of the State of Israel, mostly as a results of the rabbinic establishment’s refusal to recognize the Jewishness of the Beta Israel community. The ruling by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, in 1973 that they were indeed Jewish catalyzed the beginning of their movement to Israel. In 1977, after Menachem Begin came to power, he convened a special meeting with the director of Mossad, Yitzhak Hofi, and other representatives from the security establishment. According to the Mossad official Gad Shimron, who wrote a book about the aliyah of Ethiopian Jewry, Begin told Hofi: “We know that thousands of Falashas, Ethiopian Jews, are desperate to come to Israel. They are suffering from famine, the authori- ties are persecuting them, their neighbors are abusing them. I am asking you to activate Mossad to find ways of bringing these beloved Jews to Israel. Bring me the Jews of Ethiopia.” Mossad officials were not thrilled and tried to explain to Begin that such an operation was impossible because of the terrain and political situation in Ethiopia. Begin put his foot down. Bitzur, the Mossad unit responsible for Jewish communities in hostile lands, started exploring its options. At the same time, the Mengistu regime in Ethio- pia started facing domestic uprisings. Mengistu appealed to Israel for help. David Kimchi, the head of Tevel (Mossad’s foreign relations unit) and deputy director of Mossad, flew to Addis Ababa for an urgent meeting with him. Mengistu wanted the Israeli Air Force to conduct bombing sorties against the Eritrean rebels. Kimchi told him to forget about it, but Israel was willing to provide arms in exchange for Jews. Every Hercules aircraft that flew into Addis Ababa’s airport to offload equipment would only fly back with Jews. Mengistu agreed, and the operation was given a green light. This maneuver was pulled off twice, till Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan exposed this secret relationship at an impro- vised press conference in Geneva in February 1978. It is still unclear why Dayan said what he said: was it a slip of the tongue or a deliberate attempt to sabotage these ties, which Dayan opposed establishing? In any case, Mengistu, who was inescapably dependent on aid from East Germany and the Soviet Union, could not put up with the public revelation and abruptly severed ties with Israel. 1 Co-written with Ronen Bergman, “7 Days,” 26 December 2003 [Hebrew]. 1 The direct route, therefore, was blocked. Then the Sudanese option came up. D., the Mossad agent who was in charge of the Ethiopian file: “We ruled out any possibility of a clandestine extraction operation from Ethiopia itself. The country was in the middle of a civil war. The secret police was on full alert, even in districts far from the capital. There was no way of making whole villages disappear without getting found out.” In most cases, Mossad’s attempts to extricate the Jews via other countries, such as Djibouti and Kenya, came to naught. D: “As far as we were concerned, the Jews could blend into the massive influx of refugees pouring into Sudan, and there it would be easier to deal with them because of the chaos. The security forces there weren’t really in control.” The Jews heeded the call and started walking, first as individuals, and then in their dozens, hundreds, and thou- sands. The emissaries from Israel and Sudan were welcomed with interest and trust in the villages of the Tigray and Gondar regions, where the Jews lived. A growing groundswell of Jews started selling their meager property to non-Jews and departing in the middle of the night for the Sudanese border. They were taken there, for payment, by local people smugglers. Under Ethiopian law, this was a serious crime, potentially punishable by death. Menachem Begin, and later various official and semi-official spokespeople, described the operation as the heroic rescue of Ethiopian Jewry, which had been suffering from famine and extreme want alongside antisemitic abuse from their Christian and Muslim neighbors. This version of events is inaccurate. During the aliyah from Ethiopia, two regions of Ethiopia were in the grips of an acute drought, but they were not the areas where the Jews lived. As for antisemitism, it had existed in Ethiopia more or less in the same format since the Middle Ages and had not suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Besides the Jews, 750,000 other refugees converged on Sudan at the time. Back then, Sudan was considered an island of peace and relative stability in a region brimming with civil wars. Most of the refugees came from Ethiopia, although not from the regions where the Jews lived. Those who have visited or lived in these refugee camps describe them as hell on earth. The Red Cross was overwhelmed by the colossal mortality rate and prevalence of disease, owing to a shortage of trained staff. Consignments of food and medicine, coming from all over the world, rarely reached the truly needy. At night, the camps became even more terrifying. The white people used to pack up and sleep elsewhere, somewhere safe. Criminal gangs ruled by force of arms and battled for turf and the drugs and prostitution business. The Jews assembled in Sudan in three main camps: Wad Sharifat in northern Sudan near the town of Kassala, Wadihilu in the central border area, and Um Raquba near the town of Al Qadarif. In each of the camps, they had to carefully hide their Jewish identity. Dr. Gadi Ben-Ezer, a clinical psychologist, researched Ethiopian Jews’ stories about the trek through Sudan for his doctorate. Based on these testimonies, he published the book Like a Light in the Urn, which addresses the trauma of the Ethiopian migration through Sudan. “We used to say that we were gentiles from Ethiopia so they wouldn’t kill us,” says Y., a young woman. “They used to bring us their food, and we couldn’t eat. They used to bring us cooked chicken, and you’re dying to eat, but that’s not your way [i.e. it was not kosher]. We didn’t eat. I remember every time they brought food, we used to take it and throw it into the toilet, because on the one hand, the food wasn’t kosher, and on the other—the gentiles would have checked whether or not we had eaten it.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • July 26, 1985 30C Per Copy
    h Historical R, I , Jewis 1 1 A Associat~on street 130 sessions 02906 p rovidence , RI \·MHO.DE I {l!iC~IIJU ~------ · ::.:.:::.:1 THE ONLY ENGLISH-JEWISH WEEKLY IN RI AND SOUTHEAST MASS VOLUME LXXII, NUMBER 34 FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1985 30C PER COPY After Operation Moses Director Urges Israeli Women by Rabbi Davi~ SaPerstein visit the Gondar villages prior to the To Fight For Political Clout arrival of the Congressmen, I was told I Two major concerns brought me to could not, "because of what the Israelis did by Roberta Elliott Ethiopia: fear for the 7,000 Beta Israel still in Operation Moses." The Director of The good news is that more women are living in towns and remote villages, and Tourism told me that it had been involved in municipal politics in Israel worry about the millions of Ethiopians determined at the highest levels of than ever. The bad news is that they are threatened with starvation. Few moments government that all foreign contact with not climbing the political ladder to the in my life have made me more proud Or the villages was to be cut off to prevent Knesset and ministerial positions. being an American Jew than when I saw outsiders from "instigating" these Jews to According to Sharon Shenhav, who starving children being fed from sacks of leave. Recent statements by the heads the Jerusalem legal- services office food marked "From the U.S.A.", or when I government indicating that it would no of Na'amat, Israel's largest women's orga­ watched Abie Natlian arrive with tents longer consider Falashas as Jews reflect its nization, about 100 women sit on city marked "From Jerusalem With Love" - determination to further isolate the Beta councils in Israel, and 21 municipalities tents purchased with funds donated by I~rael from world Jewry.
    [Show full text]
  • From Falashas to Ethiopian Jews
    FROM FALASHAS TO ETHIOPIAN JEWS: THE EXTERNAL INFLUENCES FOR CHANGE C. 1860-1960 BY DANIEL P. SUMMERFIELD A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES) FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PhD) 1997 ProQuest Number: 10673074 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10673074 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT The arrival of a Protestant mission in Ethiopia during the 1850s marks a turning point in the history of the Falashas. Up until this point, they lived relatively isolated in the country, unaffected and unaware of the existence of world Jewry. Following this period and especially from the beginning of the twentieth century, the attention of certain Jewish individuals and organisations was drawn to the Falashas. This contact initiated a period of external interference which would ultimately transform the Falashas, an Ethiopian phenomenon, into Ethiopian Jews, whose culture, religion and identity became increasingly connected with that of world Jewry. It is the purpose of this thesis to examine the external influences that implemented and continued the process of transformation in Falasha society which culminated in their eventual emigration to Israel.
    [Show full text]
  • Out of Africa: Human Capital Consequences of in Utero Conditions
    NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES OUT OF AFRICA: HUMAN CAPITAL CONSEQUENCES OF IN UTERO CONDITIONS Victor Lavy Analia Schlosser Adi Shany Working Paper 21894 http://www.nber.org/papers/w21894 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 January 2016 Victor Lavy acknowledges financial support from the European Research Council through ERC Advance Grant 323439 and the Falk Institute. Analia Schlosser acknowledges financial support from the Sapir Center for Development and the Foerder Institute for Economic Research. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer- reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications. © 2016 by Victor Lavy, Analia Schlosser, and Adi Shany. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Out of Africa: Human Capital Consequences of In Utero Conditions Victor Lavy, Analia Schlosser, and Adi Shany NBER Working Paper No. 21894 January 2016 JEL No. I1,I2,J13,O15 ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effects of environmental conditions during pregnancy on later life outcomes using quasi-experimental variation created by the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in May 24th 1991. Children in utero prior to immigration faced dramatic differences in medical care technologies, prenatal conditions, and prenatal care at the move from Ethiopia to Israel.
    [Show full text]
  • Israeli Housing and Education Policies for Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants, 1984-1992
    The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies CCIS University of California, San Diego Politics, Race and Absorption: Israeli Housing and Education Policies for Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants, 1984-1992 By Fred A. Lazin Ben Gurion University of the Negev Working Paper 28 November 2000 Lazin / 2 Politics, Race and Absorption: Israeli Housing and Education Policies for Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants, 1984-1992 Fred A. Lazin Ben Gurion University of the Negev In response to a question about policies to absorb the recent influx of Soviet and Ethiopian immigrants (1989-1992) a former Israeli Prime Minister responded: “There was no policy... immigration itself creates solutions... and solves problems.” To the same question, a senior Jewish Agency absorption official commented: “... at the university you have ideas of vast plans... in life we do not have the time needed to make one... there is a need for quick and immediate decisions.” If education is the key to success for any group, it is doubly so for the Ethiopians. For them, it not only affects their chances for upward mobility, it plays a critical role in their integration into Israel's mainstream-modern, technological and mostly urban society (JDC, 1997). Introduction Since the early 1980s and until 1993 over 50,000 Black African Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel. Most "came from one of the most conservative, rural regions of Ethiopia, where modern means of communication and transportation were undeveloped, illiteracy among the adult population was more than 90 percent…" (Wagaw, 1993:26-28). As with previous Jewish immigrants, the Israeli government and Jewish Agency assumed responsibility to absorb them into Israeli society.1 Since independence in 1948 Israeli governments have pursued the goal of providing every Jewish immigrant a “decent home in a suitable living 1 Established in 1929 the Jewish Agency represented world Jewry and the World Zionist Organization in efforts to establish a Jewish State in Mandatory Palestine.
    [Show full text]
  • Targeted Killings: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Counterterrorism Policy 1
    Bank of Israel Research Department Targeted Killings: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Counterterrorism Policy 1 by Asaf Zussman * Noam Zussman ** Discussion Paper No. 2005.02 January 2005 1 The paper was updated and edited on October 2005. A condensed version is forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. For their assistance with the data we thank Yoni Fighel, Shalom Harari, and Yochanan Tzoreff of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism and Arnon Regular and Dani Rubinstein of the newspaper Ha’aretz. We thank Isaac Ben-Israel, Steve Coate, Jeremy Pressman, Enrico Spolaore, Tim Vogelsang, Romain Wacziarg, Amos Zehavi, and participants of presentations at the Bank of Israel, Cornell Univ ersity, SUNY Binghamton, Te l Aviv University, and the 2005 American and Israeli Economic Association meetings for helpful comments and suggestions. * Economics Department, Cornell Universi ty. E-mail: [email protected]. ** Research Department, Bank of Israel. E-mail: [email protected]. Any views expressed in the Discussion Paper Series are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of Israel. 91007 , 780 " , Research Department, Bank of Israel, POB 780, Jerusalem 91007, Israel Abstract targeted killing (henceforth assassinati on) of members of Palestinian terrorist organizations was a major element in Israel’s counterterrorism effort during the Palestinian uprising which started in 2000. We evaluate the effectiveness of this policy indirectly by examining Israeli stock market reactions to assassinations. Our approach relies on the assumption that the market should react positively to news of effective counterterrorism measures but negatively to news of counterproductive ones. The main result of the analysis is that the market reacts strongly to assassinations of senior members in Palestinian terrorist organizations: it declines following attempts to assassinate political leaders but rises following attempts to assassinate military ones.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethiopian Immigrants in Israel.Pdf
    Foreword economy in an individualistic society. Moreover, there was an unpredictable psychological Are ye not as the chtldren of the Ethiopians unto element: the status of the Ethiopian Jewish Me, O children of lsrael? saith the Lord. community was inverted-from that of a pariah (Amos lX,7) group and religious minority (albeit part of the majority in terms of colour and language) in Africa, The manner in which the old-new nation of lsrael to that of part of the dominant Jewish majority practises the biblical Jewish value of tzedakkah- (albeit, in terms of language and colour, a readily social justice-in the contemporary world is the identifiable group) in lsrael. subject of this important and timely report by Steven Kaplan and Hagar Salamon. lt introduces a ln analyzing the problems of resettling the new human rights 'track'within JPR's lsrael Ethiopian Jews in lsrael, we enter the famrliar Programme that signifies a commitment to widen territory of current political debate in free societies our policy research agenda to include issues on the contentious area of public policy-welfare, concerning the treatment of minority communities. jobs, housing, education-and the limits of interventionist strategies and social engineering The dramatic rescue of thousands of Ethiopian by even well-meaning governments. Ouestions of Jews from war, famine and oppression and their race, disadvantage and social exclusion bedevil transportation 'on eagles' wings' (Exodus XlX, 4) most contemporary Western societies. lntegrating by the lsrael airforce to a sanctuary in the large numbers of poor, black immigrants into an 'Promised Land' appears to fulfil in our days the affluent society is not a problem unique to lsrael.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethiopian Jews in Israel
    Ethiopian Jews in Israel by STEVEN KAPLAN and CHAIM ROSEN KJF THE MANY DIASPORA JEWISH communities, none has under- gone more dramatic change in recent years than the Beta Israel (Falashas).1 Prior to 1977 all but a handful of Beta Israel lived in Ethiopia. During the 1980s, almost half the community emigrated to Israel, and the center of Beta Israel life shifted from Ethiopia to Israel. In 1991, "Operation Sol- omon" put an end to the Beta Israel as an active and living Diaspora community, and by the end of 1993 virtually all Beta Israel were in Israel. This article describes and analyzes the process of their immigration (aliyah) to, and absorption (klitah) in, Israel. Although every attempt has been made to provide as much quantitative statistical data as possible, significant gaps remain. Most of the research undertaken on the Ethiopians in Israel has been qualitative in nature. Even in those cases where attempts have been made to carry out precise surveys of immigrants, the results have not always been satisfactory.2 Since Ethiopian immigrants usually arrived in Israel with few official documents, basic "facts" such as age and family status were often unverifiable, and immigrants were registered on the basis of their own or family members' testimony. Once they were settled in the country, the multiplicity of agencies dealing with the immigrants further complicated the process of compiling comprehensive and authoritative information.3 'In Ethiopia, the members of the group usually referred to themselves as Beta Israel (the House of Israel) or simply Israel. They were more widely known as "Falashas." Today, they prefer to be called Ethiopian Jews.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethiopian Jewish Immigrants in Israel Living Well and “Becoming Deaf” in the Homeland
    Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel Living well and “becoming deaf” in the homeland Tanya Schwarz Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology The London School of Economics and Political Science University of London May 1998 UMI Number: U615552 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615552 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 I S F 7-S/f9 OF POLITICAL AND Abstract This thesis is an ethnographic study of the Ethiopian Jews, or Beta Israel, a few years after their migration from rural Ethiopian to urban Israel. For the Beta Israel, the most significant issue is not, as is commonly assumed, adaptation to modem society, which to a large extent they have successfully achieved. But rather, their primary concerns revolve around the notion o f “belonging” in their new homeland, and the loss of control they are experiencing over their lives and those o f their children. The thesis analyses the experience of immigration from the Beta Israel’s own perspective and focuses on: first, the factors which contribute to the Beta Israel’s sense of well-being in Israel, second, the problems and difficulties they experience, and finally, the strategies they are developing to overcome these difficulties.
    [Show full text]
  • The Ethiopian-Israeli Community
    THE ETHIOPIAN-ISRAELI COMMUNITY Updated February 2021 In December 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first of a series of flights brought hundreds of new Ethiopian immigrants to Israel. The journeys took place as part of a decision by the Israeli government to enable the immigration of some 2,000 members of the Falas Mora community (see below), many of whom already have immediate family members living in the Jewish state. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior ministers attended various arrivals, witnessing the emotional family reunification scenes that took place at Ben Gurion International Airport. Minister of Aliyah and Absorption Pnina Tamanu-Shata, who herself made Aliyah with her family as a child from Ethiopia, accompanied one of the flights. Ethiopian Aliyah is a cause that has long been championed by Jewish Federations, and Federation funding has strongly supported efforts to facilitate the process of immigration and absorption carried out by The Jewish Agency for Israel, as well as other partners, including The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Ethiopian National Project. Pictured: Some of the more than 300 olim (immigrants) who arrived in Israel on a flight from Ethiopia on December 3, 2020. 1 BACKGROUND THE ETHIOPIAN COMMUNITY IN ISRAEL “Beta Israel” (meaning “House of Israel”) is the Ge’ez term for the Jewish community of Ethiopia, which is believed to date back to between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. The community was isolated from the rest of the Jewish world for most of that period, but today, the vast majority lives in Israel.
    [Show full text]
  • A MOST PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Operation Moses
    A MOST PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Operation Moses NEALE KATZ, L.L.D. Director, Jerusalem Office, United Israel Appeal (Retired) and IRVING KESSLER, M.S.W. Executive Vice Chairman Emeritus, United Israel Appeal Operation Moses was an extraordinary rescue achieved by the Jewish world. Efforts by a combination of the Israeli and U.S. governments and Israeli and U.S.-based organizations resulted in this dramatic airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. This article describes the critical role of the United Israel Appeal and the Jewish Agency in this effort ommunity organization is difficult to Ethiopian Jews began then, prompted in part Cdefine with precision. Yet there is agree­ by die efforts ofthe recently formed American ment in the Jewish world that the basic work­ Association for Ethiopian Jewry (AAE J). The ing arrangement is a partnership between Chicago-based organization, founded by practitioner and volunteer. Rarely is the Graenam Berger, raised funds and national professional completely on his or her own or awareness of the plight of the Falashas. The authorized to function without significant lay issue soon found its way onto the agenda of participation and oversight (Goldman, 1981). the General Assembly ofthe Council of Jewish Operation Moses was a singular exception Federations (now the United Jewish Commu­ to this rule. nities—^UJC). The leadership of the North The first mass rescue movement of Ethio­ American Jewish community began to take the pian Jews to Israel required a high degree of issue seriously. secrecy. For that reason, the United Israel In Israel, Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Appeal (UIA) professionals in the United Yosef ruled that the Ethiopian Jews were States and Israel who helped in the planning descendants of the Tribe of Dan and therefore and execution of this difficult and clandestine entitled to live in Israel under the Law of transfer did so without the usual volunteer Retum.
    [Show full text]
  • JANUARY 18, 1985 30C PER COPY Church & State: Controversy Ensues Over Separate Or Equal? "Operation Moses" by Robert Israel by S
    1'2 ~Bl . h Historical R. I. Jewis 11 Inside: Associat~on street Special Report - 130 sessions 02906 A Visit with Ethiopian providence , RI Jews In Israel, pages 6-7 THE ONLY ENGLISH-JEWISH WEEKLY IN R.I. AND SOUTHEAST MASS. VOLUME LXXII, NUMBER 7 FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1985 30C PER COPY Church & State: Controversy Ensues Over Separate or Equal? "Operation Moses" by Robert Israel by S. Mitchell Weitzman Jews. The Heraid was con~cted by the of evalti:ating church-st-ate separation The Government of Israel Jewish Federation of Rhode Island and (JSPS) ~ During this election year, cases is "undergoing pervasive changes acknowledged for the first time on told of this embargo after the November as prayer in school, religious issues such that permit increasing erosion of the prin­ January 3 that it has been secretly 30 issue described the disruption of the ciple."· • silent meditation, and equal access, often airlifting Ethiopian Jews from their CJF assembly. This writer was told the took center stage in the American political The constitutional base of the church­ country to Israel. To date, more than embargo had been agreed to by all the arena. state separation doctrine is derived from 10,000 people have been brought out of the major news services and the Israeli press. At the Republican convention, the the First Amendment to the Constitution drought-stricken country. By Two days after the Herald received Republican position on religion in schools which states that "Congress shall make no acknowledging the airlifting of the word of the news embargo, news of the was incorporated into the party platform: law respecting an establishment of Ethiopian Jews ·via the Belgian Trans airlift.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Matters: Young Ethiopian Jews and Race in Israel Gabriella Djerrahian Department of Anthropology Mcgill University, Montre
    Black Matters: Young Ethiopian Jews and Race in Israel Gabriella Djerrahian Department of Anthropology McGill University, Montreal March 2014 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Gabriella Djerrahian, March 2014 Elements of the thesis are considered original scholarship and distinct contributions to knowledge. Abstract This dissertation sheds light on the multiple articulations of race and blackness in Israel amongst two age groups of Ethiopian Jews (teenagers and young adults). My analysis of the stigma of Ethiopian Jewish blackness relies on a two-thronged approach. Racially speaking, on the one hand this group copes with lingering doubts as to the authenticity and “purity” in regards to their bloodline and genealogy. On the other hand, blackness as a racial stigma is located on the level of the epidermis and is, somatically speaking, skin deep. Both racial logics clash and contradict one another as Ethiopian Jews struggle to find their place in Jewish Israeli society. I describe in detail the historical period that formed the group that came to be known as Ethiopian Jews and recount the impact encounters with Western Jews had on their formation as black Jews living in Israel. I argue that their identity as Jews racially speaking is the platform on which Ethiopians’ blackness gains traction. As such, however marginalized, their position as “internal Others” cannot be disassociated from the larger legal and structural implications of their racial inclusion into the body of the Jewish meta-family. Race and ethnic relations amongst Jews are also explored as a way to provide the backdrop against which Ethiopian Jewish blackness and claims of racism emerged.
    [Show full text]